As mentioned earlier, the previous owner claimed to have had the engine running 6 months earlier, and so we thought we'd try our luck with a simple refuel and engine priming. At this stage we still had no radiator hoses installed, so we knew that even if we got it running, we would have to keep it brief as we had no cooling system. We were also unsure of the condition of the fuel pump, and so couldn't rely on it working. In addition, we noticed that one of the hose connections from the fuel pump was really badly rusted through and so would have to be replaced in the future.
Gav's dad, Steve, who is quite the Citroen enthusiast, had taught Gav a little trick of filling the float-tank on the carburetor with fresh fuel, which should give the engine enough to turn over and get running for a while.
We removed the bulky 'after-market' air-filter which was in our way, and then manually filled the float-tank.
With baited breath, we turned the key, and pulled the starter lever on the dash. To our excitement, we received a good, strong response from the starter motor, and the engine struggled to get started, but couldn't quite maintain an idle.
As we contemplated our next step, someone suggested that perhaps the ignition system was not functioning correctly. By this point we had already realised that most of the electrical weren't working, but weren't yet sure of the reason.
We checked the distributor and spark-plugs and found them in fairly 'good-nick' and then to test the ignition, we pulled one of the sparks from the engine block, but left it connected to the distributor.
We once again tried the engine, but were getting no response from the spark-plug.
Now our attention turned to the electricals. We checked the 2 fuses and both seemed fine, and yet, we still had no response from any of the electrical systems. We were testing simply by trying the headlights.
It was now that a rather fortuitous accident occurred. Joel's dad, Paul, who had been assisting us, accidentally wedged one of the fuses IN-BETWEEN the two slots, effectively connecting the top terminals of the two fuse receptacles. All of a sudden the fuse sparked, and the headlights and dash lights lit up. We speculate that this is probably due to some of the wires in the fuse box being connected to the wrong terminals. But for now, not wanting to 'look a gift horse in the mouth' we left it rigged that way in order continue our work on the engine.
Once again we tried starting the engine whilst Joel held one of the spark plugs and Gav pulled the ignition. Gav was suitably amused and satisfied as a shocked yelp from Joel informed him that, yes, in fact, the sparks were now firing.
Replacing the spark plug, we crossed our fingers and tried the engine and the garage was filled with cheers from all our spectators as our 60 year old car sprang to life!
Our next step was to get the cooling system working, which would allow us to run the engine for longer! At this point, we had no radiator hoses and, as mentioned, the hose connections on the water pump were badly corroded. A few days later, Gav was working out near a Morris Minor parts supplier we had found on the internet, so he swung by there on his way home and picked up a new water pump, gasket and hoses.
According to the Workshop Manual, the easiest way to work on the front of the engine is to remove the front bumper and grill, and so we decided that this was a good place to start. We managed to remove all the bolts except for one, tiny bolt which also holds the 'hockey stick' trim onto the front. Try as we might, none of the tools we had available allowed us to remove the nut. They were either the wrong size, or the handles and action were the wrong shape to allow us to work in such a tight proximity.
We had been informed at an earlier stage that many of the Morris' bolts would be neither empirical, nor metric standard, but would be a specific English standard called "Whitworth" and we would have to acquire a set of these.
So, in the meantime, leaving our stubborn nut (and therefore the whole grill) in place, we removed the radiator from the engine bay.
We took the radiator outside and ran water through it using a garden hose, and as we expected, apart from a a couple of bent radiating fins on the front, the unit was in good nick and the water that ran out was quite clean. We suspect it may have been replaced fairly recently.
The Workshop Manual suggested that to replace the water pump we would just have to remove a couple of bolts and the whole fan/water pump should come off as a single unit, however once we played around with it, we realise this was not the case on our engine. In order to remove the pump we had to unbolt the radiator fan, then slacken the bolts holding the generator in place, thereby relieving the tension on the fan belt. This allowed us to slip it off, and then finally removing the centre 'cap' from the fan assembly gave us access to the final two nuts holding the water pump on.
From there it was rather simple to replace the old pump with the new one and put everything back together again. We filled the radiator and ran the engine for a few minutes, but unfortunately weren't able to tell if the pump was working, because the exhaust fumes filled the garage well before the water had time to heat up. For the time being, we're assuming its working, until we can get the car running and move it out into the open air.
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